Facilitation of Online Student Group Projects with a Support Agent Janice Whatley Martin Beer Geof Staniford Information Systems Institute Department of Computer Computing and Information University of Salford Science Technology Manchester, M5 4WT University of Liverpool Liverpool John Moores 44 0161 295 5175 Liverpool, L69 7ZF University 44 0151 794 3672 44 0151 2312080 J.E.Whatley@salford.ac.uk M.D.Beer@csc.liv.ac.uk g.staniford@livjm.ac.uk ABSTRACT 2. THE ROLE OF GROUP PROJECTS IN As more courses are provided online, consideration must be given to providing for group working, as an integral part of the LEARNING learning experience. Present online provision, based on CAL, is Traditional undergraduate and postgraduate courses incorporate aimed at individual study in the main, and CSCW products are a mixture of individual and group learning methods, and it is aimed at business users. We propose student support agents to acknowledged that group learning offers several advantages to help with the maintenance aims of group working, providing learners [4], [7]. Students learn from each other by exchanging support in developing group relations. Our initial prototype is ideas and resources, negotiating strategies and tasks, are able to built in Prolog, and is based on a whiteboard architecture. In this comment on each others’ work and contribute towards merging paper we describe the design work, based on analysis of and redrafting of the final written work. A key component of traditional face to face group project work, through to undergraduate and postgraduate courses is group project work. developing the prototype for testing. This is because in undertaking group projects students are given the opportunity to develop and practice the task and the social Keywords aspects of team working. Agents, Groupwork, Online learning. The learning cycle by Kolb [8] gives a good summary of the stages in student learning, and this gives a starting point for INTRODUCTION thinking about how we approach course material design and There is a drive towards making higher education accessible to a presentation. The main feature is that students do not learn by greater number of participants than ever before. It is agreed in simply being told facts. They need to be able to practice using some circles that modern technology should be able to provide the facts, and reflect on the way they are used in order to form applications to enable students to work at their own pace or in connections in the brain, which can be regarded as knowledge. their own time, notably Computer Aided Learning (CAL) Further experimentation, experience and reflection leads to packages. However, CAL packages are essentially aimed at intelligence or expertise in a subject. Educated students should independent learners, and online students should be given the be able to formulate a set of facts into information within their opportunity to develop group working skills as well. Various own minds. If the students are able to talk about this information, forms of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) are being then they can be said to have knowledge of the subject, and used for online courses, to allow for discussion between students intelligence shows in their ability to apply the knowledge in a and tutors, but their use in supporting some aspects of group variety of situations. Group projects give students an opportunity work is limited. We propose a software agent that can support to discuss their understanding of the subject with their peers, as the maintenance aims of group project working, called a they apply the theory to practice. Guardian Agent. Experiential learning and problem-based learning have been used to encourage applying facts and skills learned to a real life situation, often using case studies. These give the opportunity for students to practice and reflect on the effect in a given situation, Conference ’00, Month 1-2, 2000, City, State. Copyright 2000 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0000…$5.00. from which they are able to formulate patterns to determine which situations lend themselves to particular approaches. Some Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work university courses have been run entirely using problem-based for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that learning [2]. The best results have, however, probably been copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial obtained where problem-based learning forms only a part of the advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the course content, and it is used to build upon learned facts and first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. skills. 3. COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR GROUP individual and specific additional requirements, not readily provided by Groupware products, which are specifically aimed at WORKING ONLINE business users. New technology as a means of communication Successful group working requires that the maintenance roles as has actually changed the ways in which people communicate and well as the task roles of the group are given attention [5]. Group collaborate, e.g. email has meant that traditional working dynamics play an important role in determining how successful boundaries have been removed as communication between lower the outcome of the project is, i.e. the ways in which the members and higher levels of staff is now acceptable. interact with each other and how this changes with time as the group develops [1], [4], [7]. The most successful groups are composed of members with different personalities, so allowing 3.1. Experiences of working in a group online students to choose their group members, as they often do in face One of the authors took part in an exercise to work in a group to to face projects, may not lead to the most successful outcomes, produce a report on the assessment of Key Skills online. The as the tendency is to choose similar minded friends. At work it is group worked online over a period of two months, in which time unlikely that a member will be able to choose their colleagues, so they used email predominantly to communicate, and it is important that students can work with people they do not occasionally used the virtual classroom provided in Blackboard particularly like, and learn to be tolerant of others’ attitudes in for synchronous discussion. At the end of the exercise reflection concentrating on the given task. on the group processes was recorded, which can be summarised as follows: Learning by experimentation and making mistakes and by doing, which require immediate feedback and guidance by a tutor, are • we found ourselves able to communicate, but not not easily accomplished within online courses. But advances in necessarily understand the meaning of what was said; technology ought to enable us to design more adaptive CAL • it was difficult to get a concensus; material, which exhibit some intelligence, called intelligent • at times the communication can seem aggressive; tutoring systems (ITS), and to allow for more rapid • it is even more difficult online to agree meeting times; communication of feedback, so that future online courses are an • we found it difficult to achieve a fair distribution of improvement on correspondence courses. work; • the group discussion process allowed each one to Online courses can be solitary affairs, unless Summer schools, identify one’s own perspective Saturday workshops etc. are included in the programme. • we were using different platforms and some members However, these reduce the self-paced element of online courses, had difficulty opening others’ files. as students must prepare for a group tutorial on a particular date. Management of such courses to incorporate a group project will At the same time two other groups were working on similar require considerable negotiation of availability and readiness, in reports, but mainly working face to face, with CMC used as an order to gather together an appropriate number of students adjunct. When individual opinions were sought, using a capable of working together for a given period of time. A questionnaire, after the exercise it was apparent that the online number of problems arise when adapting a conventional group experienced more difficulties than the other groups, approach to group projects for students working online: including: • students are working at their own pace and in their • the face to face groups tended to find the progress own time, so a timetable must be imposed either by the meetings helpful and found it easiest to get started, group itself or by the course leader; • the online team tended not to trust each other as much • organising conventional meetings is not possible, but a as the others, experienced less support from each other, substitute is necessary, probably aided by technology; they also felt they learned less by working in a group • sharing information must be enabled by technology, and learned less by discussing and explaining ideas to students must be able to express their opinions online, each other. which may require different skills; • assessment is probably not possible on an individual 3.2. Comparisons between online and face to basis, but a group mark may not be acceptable if students recognise that members of a group are not face working pulling their weight; Computer mediated communication (CMC) tools, such as • tutors may experience difficulties monitoring the conferencing, email, discussion forums support the progress of groups of students. communication needs for the task roles of group projects, examples include studies of co-operative learning in a virtual An important area of CSCW research is into improving the university [3] and groupwork in mathematics teaching [6]. support provided for online work. Distance learning is a growing Student support using commercial groupware products enables market and as higher education institutions strive to provide communication between group members and instructors. BSCW online learning experiences, consideration should be given to has been used as support for group projects and was found useful providing an interface which gives a level of support comparable for information sharing, offering greater flexibility in students’ to that provided on campus based courses. Social inclusion is an face to face communication, but offered limited support for the important aim of online provision, and these learners often have maintenance roles of groupwork [11]. Table 1 – A comparison between online and face to face methods of communication Stage of project Traditional use of face-to-face Online Getting established: introductions, Main function of intitial meetings. Email, video-conference, bulletin personal abilities and preferences, board, groupware, guardian agent. brainstorming, agreeing rules. Anticipating problems: awareness of These might be apparent by non-attendance Non-contribution to bulletin board or problems. at meetings, non-verbal cues etc. lack of response to email may be recognised by group members, or by guardian agent. Getting off to a good start: agreeing Face-to-face agreement to these is in a sense Email, video-conference, bulletin ground rules. binding. board, groupware, guardian agent. Managing time: agreeing a time plan. Again face-to-face agreement is binding. Email, video-conference, bulletin Problems will become apparent at each board, groupware, guardian agent. meeting, and action agreed. Allocating tasks: equal distribution of Some discussion essential, which may take Email, video-conference, bulletin tasks to individuals and sub-groups. time. Sub-groupings are spontaneous. Final board, groupware, guardian agent. agreement of allocation is binding. Choreographing activities: bringing it Individuals will bring hard copies of their Email, video-conference, bulletin all together. work to explain to each other. An individual board, groupware, written post or fax, is responsible for collating the work. guardian agent. In order to see how new technology can be applied to group possible for group members to agree to a change of plan, by projects, it is necessary to analyse the stages of a group project, reallocating tasks. This means that a traditional time plan is to determine the particular problems encountered at the different likely to be more fluid than an online one. stages, and to determine whether new ways of working may be possible, rather than simply adapting a current traditional project, Drawbacks with online technologies include: and where support in the form of a Guardian Agent might be • the time taken for a discussion and to reach collective appropriate. agreement; • the time it might take to recognise potential problems; This table identifies some of the tools that could be applied at the • getting all members to agree their responsibilities; different stages of the group project. It can be seen that the • knowing who can do which parts of the project; meeting plays a prominent part in getting the group established, • recognising when extra help with skills is needed; formulating ground rules and identifying individual talents. At • bringing the project together. face to face meetings non-contribution by members is implied by non-attendance, also disagreement and other negative feelings Some groupware products provide features which help with are often recognised by visual cues. Agreement between these problems, but these are designed for business use, and may members at a face to face meeting might be more binding than not adequately help the students to acquire appropriate group agreement arrived at online. Hence an online project will require working skills. There is also a need for tutors to be able to a considerable amount of support, if it is to be kept on track. monitor the progress of the project. These difficulties represent the sort of capabilities that could be offered by a group support Typical problems with face-to-face meetings include: making agent, however, a commitment to the group project by each sure that discussion is relevant, keeping to a reasonable meeting individual is still an essential ingredient. time, ensuring all members are present and keeping to the agenda. Email and bulletin board messages tend to be shorter and succinct, though it is possible to be sidetracked into discussion 4. ARCHITECTURE OF A GUARDIAN that is not relevant, and a member that suggests online that this is AGENT happening would be very brave. Obviously time is a critical An agent is a self-contained, concurrently executing software factor in face-to-face meetings, but not so for online discussions process, which encapsulates the current state in terms of which are asynchronous, though long waits for responses from knowledge, and is able to communicate with other agents group members may be unwelcome. Online discussions should through message passing [13]. We propose an agent to support be controlled by an agenda with time limits set, so that all group students, called a Guardian Agent, which works quietly in the members know what stage in the discussion is current. background on each group member’s workstation. The agent will autonomously monitor the progress of the group project, suggest When problems arise it is often too late to do anything about ways in which the students can act to improve the progress of the them, but if a problem can be anticipated, the project can often project and enhance the communication between members of the get back onto schedule without wasting too much time. At face- group. to-face meetings individual worries may be aired that may or may not be significant. Problems, such as lack of skills, can often Each student working on the project will have an individual be resolved by explanation from other group members. When the agent, operating in the background, watching progress, time plan appears to be getting behind schedule it is often measuring it against the plan and taking remedial action when necessary. The agents belonging to each member of the group supporting group working [12]. Table 2 shows the stages of a are able to communicate with each other to exchange group project and the roles we have identified for our agents. information and negotiate on behalf of the students. Table 2 – Roles identified for the Guardian Agent at each The agent might recognise that lack of time is becoming a stage of the group project. problem when monitoring the progress of the project against a plan of the work to be completed, and a variety of solutions Project stage Potential areas in which GA can might be suggested. Similarly, lack of skills could be recognised help by the appearance of errors in the work, or the student asking Planning Introductions how to do a particular task. The individual agent will support an individual student, but in addition this agent will communicate Setting ground rules with the other students’ agents to support the group as a whole to Produce a project plan ensure that the project is completed satisfactorily. The student Doing the Check the time schedule will also be free to work unaided by the agent if so desired, project Ensure all members contribute though monitoring will continue unobtrusively. Identify lack of skills Completing Collating the individual parts It is not proposed that such an agent will replace the tutor’s Preparing a report input, but the agent will perform some of the mundane Appraising the group’s administrative tasks, which are usually performed by the group members during face-to-face meetings automatically, but which performance do not need to be performed by the students in order to fulfil the learning outcomes of the group project. The role of the tutor is Our research is considering the project planning processes different for online learning [10], and support for the tutor by an initially, including allocating roles, agreeing ground rules and agent is an additional functionality to be pursued. Multi-agent producing a project plan (Table 2). systems can combine different types of agents, but in our architecture each individual agent will have a similar structure The process of allocating roles begins with finding out about when the project begins. Each agent will have interfacing each other’s abilities. Students who have worked with each other capabilities for communicating with its student, reasoning previously will have a good idea about this already, but online capabilities for monitoring and analysing the current situation, a students will have to explicitly describe themselves. The agent knowledge base personal to its student and communication asks its student to identify the predetermined task areas he or she capabilities for communicating with other students’ agents. The likes, is good at, dislikes and is not good at. These are filed as architecture for our agent system is shown in Figure 1, which Prolog facts and posted to the whiteboard, where the other agents shows that communication with other students’agents is by can access the information. One of the agents is given the role of means of a whiteboard. allocating tasks to the students and, after checking that all the students have posted their abilities list to the whiteboard, this agent determines which students should be allocated which task, using the following rule: Student Student Student If studentA likes X and is able at X Then studentA should do X. A series of allocation facts will then be posted to the whiteboard. Guardian Guardian Guardian If no student has been allocated to a particular task the agent Agent Agent Agent looks again at the facts at its disposal and using the following rule, decides whether any student may be able to perform a task if given appropriate training: If studentB likes X, but is unable at X Then studentB should be offered training in X Whiteboard A series of training facts are similarly posed to the whiteboard. It is likely that there will be some conflict to resolve, such as too many students being allocated to the same task, or no student Figure 1 Architecture of Guardian Agent System allocated or offered training for a task. After informing the students of the conflict, the agents may negotiate on behalf of their student to solve the conflicts if the student does not choose 4.1. Development of the Guardian Agent to negotiate unaided. Students undertaking group projects in a traditional setting face The next planning task is to set the ground rules, identified as an several problems to a greater or lesser degree. The results of important element in successful group projects [9]. Each student surveys on group projects have been considered closely when can suggest a rule, such as answering email messages within 48 deciding what functions software agents should undertake in hours, informing the other students in advance of non- participation in a conference or when experiencing difficulties [11] Vliem, M., Using the Internet in university education, completing a set task on time. The ground rules are likely to be Ergonomics Group, University of Twente, Netherlands, different from those for a face-to-face project, so the agent will 1998. be able to offer help to students, by suggesting rules, and [12] Whatley, J., Beer, M., Staniford, G. and Scown, P., HCI collating the rules for agreement by all of the students. International, 1999. [13] Wooldridge, M. and Jennings, N., Intelligent agents: ECAI- An initial prototype has been implemented in Prolog, using the 94 Workshop on agent theories. Springer-Verlag: London. declarative features for handling facts and rules, which can be 1995. passed between each student’s agent and the whiteboard. Evaluation of the prototype will give us valuable information as to the suitability of autonomous agents for supporting students undertaking group project work. 5. CONCLUSIONS If online courses are to be regarded as an acceptable substitute for traditional campus-based courses, an element of group working should be incorporated into the scheme. However, online group projects require very different ways of working, though the learning outcomes should remain the same, for example to prepare the students for team working, and practice what has been learned on the course. In the future when global online team working becomes the accepted practice at work, the learning outcomes may need to be extended. Group workers experience a number of problems associated with the mainrenance aims of groupwork when working online with limited CMC support. Agents are suggested as appropriate to provide additional support which will overcome some of these difficulties. In this paper we have reported on the initial design of agents to support students undertaking group projects, showing the chosen architecture for our prototype system. The implementation in Prolog uses an agent tool, which can be extended for a number of additional purposes. 6. REFERENCES [1] Bion, W., Experiences in groups. London: Tavistock Publications, 1961. [2] Boud, D. and Feletti, G., The challenge of problem-based learning, , Kogan Page, 1998. [3] English, S. & Yazdani, M., Computer supported cooperative learning in a virtual university. 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